March 21, 2008

It's the first full day of spring, and we woke to another 12 inches of snow here in the mountains of northern Vermont. Even our next door neighbor, who runs an inn and depends on the ski trade, is beginning to grumble about it. I'm trying to take it calmly and not let it bother me too much. This morning I drove down the perilous mountain road to a dentist appointment 20 miles away. By the time I got to Burlington, the roads were dry and there was plenty of bare ground showing. Not fair that spring comes so much sooner there, though the gray skies that seem so dismal in Burlington seem so dreamy up here in the mountains, almost like a Chinese painting. Well, I keep telling myself that, anyway.

This past weekend I was a vendor at the Central Vermont Garden Show, which was not lucrative for me , but was a productive weekend nonetheless. I had enough spare time to carve a couple of new stencils at the show, companions to each other, which I'll use on shirts, scarves, jackets, coats. They came out great, I think. I can't wait to see how they look on fabric. And I can't wait to look out our window and see real birds on real oak leaves, singing to a misty moon.

Speaking of singing, I confess that I, along with so many others, am addicted to the singing of the young David Archuleta on this season's American Idol. His voice is so haunting and so moving, it seems the kind of voice the nightingale would have had in the famous Oscar Wilde story. Am I overly romanticizing everything? Probably, but it takes a lot of imagination to get through the long Vermont winter.